This invention relates to a process and apparatus for printing long-piled materials, particularly for imitating the hides of animals.
Pile materials from which imitations of hides are to be produced are usually printed solely from the pile side, with color paste. The natural hide, particularly that of a number of varieties of wild cat, nevertheless has markings which cannot be imitated by an imprint on the pile side. For example, the hide of the Siberian lynx is characterized at the base of the fur, i.e. to the skin, by dark spots of pigmentation, varying in depth and shade, some of them extending in the direction of the coarse hairs and some of them fading before the coarse hairs. The hide of the Siberian lynx also shows a completely different pattern on the back from that found on the belly. On the back the coarse hairs are of quite a different hue, their tips presenting a mixed pattern.
The hide of the ounce shows a similar but annular color scheme in the vicinity of the skin.
Hide patterns of this kind cannot be accurately imitated by the known method of printing long-piled materials solely from the pile side. A process is already known, however, for imitating these hide patterns by the methodical spraying of color solutions from nozzles onto the back of the long-piled materials. The subsequent application of vapour causes the color solution applied to the back to be drawn still more deeply into the pile fibers. It is true that this method results in a certain approach to the natural original, but it is by no means sufficiently accurate and differentiated to provide satisfactory imitations of the coats of animals.
The purpose of the invention is to enable the production of animal coat imitations from long-piled materials, with the use of one or more coloring substances, to be improved in such a way as to provide imitations far more similar to the natural original than the imitations so far known.